My Stupidest Post: The Time I Called Someone Named John Carter In Every State To See If They Were Seeing ‘John Carter’
Although this is being sent out on April Fool’s Day, pay no heed, the only fool in this whole endeavor was me. This has been, by far, the most requested “post that had been deleted from the internet” request since The Hard Pass was launched in February. Well, here it is, perhaps the stupidest post I’ve ever done, especially factoring in just how long it took.
In 2012, the Edgar Rice Burroughs character John Carter of Mars was adapted into a feature film, directed by WALL-E’s Andrew Stanton, and, kind of inexplicably, titled John Carter, sans “of Mars.” It’s not just the title went from obvious science fiction to just some guy’s pretty common name, it also happened to be Noah Wyle’s character‘s name on ER, which in 2012 was much more known than the John Carter of Mars book series. (And now with The Pitt being so popular, it probably is today, too.)
I had been working as staff at Moviefone (a place I often forget I worked at¹) for a few months when I came up with this “idea.” Since John Carter is such a common name, I thought it would be funny to call someone with that name in every state to find out if John Carter was going to see John Carter. My logic was, if a movie came out called Mike Ryan,² how would I not see that? Also, how hard would it be to call 50 people? It’s only 50…
¹In 2011 my editor at Vanity Fair was hired to run Moviefone under Arianna Huffington, shortly after AOL bought Huffington Post. He then hired me. After only a few months it was decided the AOL brands, like Moviefone, would no longer be under Arianna, so we were all moved over to Huffington Post. Everything I wrote in my short time at Moviefone has been gone from the internet for about a decade now.
²The closest I have to this is the film Secret Admirer, in which C. Thomas Howell plays a character named Michael Ryan.
No, 50 might not seem like a big number, at least not until you’re on your third day of calling John Carters and so far you’ve reached a grand total of 22 of them. It’s at this point 50 starts feeling like a very big number.
This originally published on March 8, 2012. I remember it was a Thursday (I just double checked, this is correct) because I was the last one left in the office at 770 Broadway, still calling John Carters. I remember this specifically because everyone was at a work happy hour at a bar a few blocks away while I was still on the phone talking to John Carter of Mississippi and John Carter of Louisiana. It’s at this point I truly started questioning my life choices.
Anyway! Now, back from the internet graveyard, here’s me calling someone named John Carter in every state as it originally published:
'John Carter': Will The John Carters Of Earth See Sci-Fi Epic?
This weekend, the movie once titled John Carter of Mars – but now simply titled John Carter – arrives in theaters. John Carter is a very common name. So, that raised the question: Are people named John Carter excited to see the movie John Carter? To find out, I used an online phone directory and cold-called John Carters in every state asking, "Are you going to see John Carter?"
For every one person who answered, I made another 20 calls – encountering an endless stream of disconnected phone lines, wrong numbers, voice mail and answering machines (yes, they still exist and, yes, people still play the "fooled you, this is an answering machine" joke). Unfortunately, in four states, John Carter didn't answer his phone (sorry, West Virginia, South Dakota, Alaska and Wisconsin). I can only assume that those John Carters are all in line for tickets.
As for the others, here is how John Carters across the United States answered my question, in the order that I spoke to them.
